Jemstone Newsletter

Jemstone Area

Syndicate

We believe there's a strong link between good, questioning,
independent, courageous media and development. Journalists can
and should make things better in the societies where they
operate. This underpins the Jemstone mission"supporting media
supporting development".

Jemstone
seeks to strengthen media which see their role as trying to provide
people with the information they need to make decisions about their
lives. Jemstone actively works with media organisations focussing on
development. And Jemstone tries to support development by providing
media and communications consultancy and training.

For example we ran capacity-building and career development
workshops for Al Jazeera in Doha; we provide economic
and environmental training for the media; we help ngos
with media relations and have designed and maintained
the biggest development web-site in Jordan www.jordandevnet.org

We bring a development perspective to journalism (what
difference will this make to ordinary people?) and we
open up development issues to journalistic scrutiny
and public attention

Please contact us
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if you have examples of the links between good media and development or

if our communication skills can help with your development project or

if our development experience can improve your journalism or your media organisation.

Since
May 1998 it's been obvious to us that there are close links between
"good media" and development. We wrote about it at that time,
here on the Jemstone web-site, as soon as we got back from a conference
in Denmark on the relationship between:

information technology

freedom of expression

democracy

development

These were early days and we just posed a couple of the underlying questions: "It
is true that better information technology should lead to greater
freedom of expression; this in turn ought to support democracy; and
this is likely to lead to more and faster development. But this
process is not inevitable. So, we are very interested in
exploring why it doesn't always work. . . . . . And how do we justify
spending scarce resources on information technology when agricultural
investment (for example) would bring more obvious and immediate
benefits?"

Since then we've
become aware we're not alone in our belief that good media can make a
difference. In 1999 James Wolfensohn, President of the World
Bank, set out similar views in a speech in Washington. And we
worked with the Bank, running their media relations at the
Mediterranean Development Forum in Cairo in 2000 on the theme "Voices
for Change, Partners for Prosperity". Many of the arguments
about media and development are laid out in the book "The Right to
Tell", with a foreword written by the Bank President:

". . .I have long argued that a free press is not a luxury. It is at the core of equitable
development. The media can expose corruption. They can keep a check on public policy by
throwing a spotlight on government action. They let people voice diverse opinions on
governance and reform, and help build public consensus to bring about change. Such media
help markets work better. . . . They can facilitate trade, transmitting ideas and innovation
across boundaries. We have also seeen that the media are important for human development,
bringing health and education information to remote villages in countries from Uganda to Nicaragua."

One
of the most thoughtful modern British journalists, Professor Ian
Hargreaves, former head of news at the BBC, Deputy Editor of the
Financial Times and Editor of The Independent, introduces his recent
book 'Journalism -- truth or dare?' by stating:

"It
is now widely understood that without abundant and accessible
information, we can have neither the democracy in which we believe not
the economic growth and consumer choice we
desire . . . good journalism provides the information and opinion upon which successful democratic societies depend. Corrupt that and you corrupt everything."

Looking from the other end of the relationship between
good media and development, the economist and Nobel
Prize Winner, Amartya Sen, in his revolutionary book
'Development as Freedom" provides compelling evidence
that the negation of development occurs when democracy
(including the public's right to be informed) is absent:

"Democratic
governments. . . have to win elections and face public criticism, and
have strong incentives to undertake measures to avert famines and other
catastrophes. It is not surprising that no famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy. . ."

It is in this space that Jemstone operates, "supporting media supporting development".

JEMSTONE: consultants in communications and development:
If the job of the good journalist is to find out what's going on, to
understand it and then to let people know about it, (as interestingly
and accurately as possible), then we try to go beyond this process --
at the beginning by helping to provide a flow of interesting,
stimulating stories and information and at the end by advising how the
information can have an impact.
Untainted information is
essential for democracy and development and for more than ten years we
have been working at every stage of this process, knowing that to put
the right information in the right hands at the right time is what
makes a difference.

We support good journalism -- we ran six workshops
in the first half of 2001 for Al Jazeera TV and we
have worked actively 'training' over 1,500 local journalists
and media professionals and sixty of the main media
organisations in the MENA region since the early 1990s.

We have grasped the opportunities offered by new
technology -- operating the first inter-active regional
media web-site since 1996 and establishing the big
development web site www.jordandevnet.org

We work with development organisations -- to build
communications capacity and understanding internally
and to help them to put their case to decision-makers
and the wider public: we were responsible for media
relations and strategey at the World Bank's MDF3 in
Cairo; we've run a series of workshops for ngos in
Jordan on communications and development; we organised
the Volunteer of the Year Award in Jordan and have
launched special web-sites on the Millennium Development
Goals and Sustainable Human Development www.jordandevnet.org

PROCESSING INFORMATION:
If we regard the media as being at the heart
of the analysis then we need to upgrade the performance
of individual journalists and their media organisations.
This is where we began and we've been doing it since
1993, with over 40 media training courses, workshops
and seminars. We believe that independent, questioning,
courageous journalism can make a difference both socially
and economically -- rooting out corruption, holding
those in and with power to account and giving a voice
to the poor and disadvantaged.

THE FLOW OF INFORMATION:
If the media are at the centre, then the first stage of the
process is obtaining information. This includes developing the
journalists' ability to obtain the information -- we ran workshops on
investigative journalism in Jordan in 1999 and 2002 and in Cairo and
Sana'a in 2000. The practical booklet we produced, in both
English and Arabic, has been widely circulated.

But
access to information is also about the legal framework and climate
and, more practically, about the attitude of the whole range of
organisations to providing information. We have supported
initiatives towards greater freedom of information, even campaigning
openly against restrictive media laws as well as lobbying discreetly at
senior levels.

And we have
worked with organisations to ensure that more information is more
readily available and in an accessible format. This includes
workshops on communications for ngos and newsletter writing for
Jordan's Ministry of Social Development, which are as much about
establishing the public's right to have the information as about the
technical issues. We also have projects at the organisational
level, trying to collate and disseminate useful information for the
media through our web-sites, eg Jemstone's Journalinks and DevNet's
events diary and the contacts directory.

THE POWER OF INFORMATION:
"So you give people the truth -- what are they going to do with it if
they don't have democracy?" This quote, from the Jemstone booklet
on independent and investigative journalism, points like an arrow
towards the third element in any communications and development
strategy. Though making information available is an essential
first step (and for many, including good journalists, often an end in
itself) it is not normally enough to bring about change.

In
societies where the public's ability to influence events is minimal it
is naive to expect that the mere publication of a news story or feature
will make much difference. That requires a more sophisticated
understanding of the policy-making process. This is not to say
that mass media have no part to play; they help to create a climate
where change is desired and acceptable. We have recently
submitted proposals to develop Sudan TV and radio as more of a 'forum
for public discussion' than just a means of conveying government
decisions to the masses. For us such a reform would widen and
improve the popular debate, increase people's understanding of the
issues and start to demonstrate to those in power that, if their aim is
greater success and prosperity for their country, they can do their job
more effectively with public involvement, support and ideas.

MAKING CHANGES:
Changing attitudes and behaviour are not easy -- you have to predispose
people towards change, then enable them to make the change and then
reinforce the process once the changes have been made. This
applies at the individual level and also organisationally and
governmentally. By giving individuals information, examples,
encouragement and support, change can be facilitated and this can have
implications wider than the individuals involved (Professor
Robert Chambers' 'benign virus' theories).
Sometimes though
more cynical approaches are required, where opponents and obstacles
have to be identified and neutralised, essential supporters have to be
rallied and empowered and the decision-making process understood in
detail. We have had experience of converting ideas into policy in
Europe (involving nuclear waste, community schools and Euro-Med media
policy) and now we are exploring with several local development
organisations the possibilities within the region of helping to turn
high-quality participatory research findings into effective new
policies.